3 ms·

It's not really partial credit for failing to meet expectations. Just an example. A 'complicated' geometry problem. Our expectations is that the student unders

by krisoft 12y ago

It's not really partial credit for failing to meet expectations. Just an example. A 'complicated' geometry problem. Our expectations is that the student understands the text, draws a draft of the shapes. She then recalls the appropriate two or three equitations. Formulates a plan to solve them (first this eq, which gives that info, with which I can ...), then she executes that plan and writes down the result. Student A does a neat drawing, marks the important measurements, uses those same markings to note the equitations down and sets out to solve them. During a substitution she mistakes one of her 3-s to a 2, therefore the result is completely wrong. She completed 3 of our expectations and failed the last one. Student B draws a happy seal and takes a nap. 0 out of 4 completed goals. I would argue that the first students deserves more credit, and those are full credits not partials.

learnstats2 12y ago
This is a fair comment, that a single question can be used test several different aspects of a topic. However, unless you are specifically testing the student's ability to string the different aspects together precisely, I don't believe that to be an optimal exam question. Here, for example, you are seem to be allowing the student a 50% passing grade (2/4 expectations met) if they show they understand the text by drawing it out, and remember the formulas from the syllabus sufficiently to write them down without starting to apply them. That maybe isn't your intent, and maybe your ideal mark scheme would try to avoid over-crediting something like that. But even if that's not what you intended, that has become the reality: setting expectations for partial credit has led to increasingly simplistic expectations of students and this in turn to rampant grade inflation. Grade inflation has been strongly encouraged by institutions' statistical collation, but has been mostly avoided by the SAT. I'm not sure that I want students to have access to good grades even if they consistently give wrong final answers, transposing digits and so on. It shows a lack of precision and a lack of full understanding of the question (not able to do effective sanity checking). Precision is a skill that mathematics can help people to learn, in my opinion. The SAT being multiple choice means you have a fair opportunity to correct this type of mistake - a typographical error typically won't fit with any of the multiple choice answers and you'll have the chance to correct it (costing you only the correction time - and teaching you that precision is of some importance). The wrong multiple choice answers tend to fit deliberately with common conceptual errors. This actually illustrates a useful element of the SAT exam design.

by krisoft 12y ago

learnstats2 12y ago

This is a fair comment, that a single question can be used test several different aspects of a topic. However, unless you are specifically testing the student's ability to string the different aspects together precisely, I don't believe that to be an optimal exam question. Here, for example, you are seem to be allowing the student a 50% passing grade (2/4 expectations met) if they show they understand the text by drawing it out, and remember the formulas from the syllabus sufficiently to write them down without starting to apply them. That maybe isn't your intent, and maybe your ideal mark scheme would try to avoid over-crediting something like that. But even if that's not what you intended, that has become the reality: setting expectations for partial credit has led to increasingly simplistic expectations of students and this in turn to rampant grade inflation. Grade inflation has been strongly encouraged by institutions' statistical collation, but has been mostly avoided by the SAT. I'm not sure that I want students to have access to good grades even if they consistently give wrong final answers, transposing digits and so on. It shows a lack of precision and a lack of full understanding of the question (not able to do effective sanity checking). Precision is a skill that mathematics can help people to learn, in my opinion. The SAT being multiple choice means you have a fair opportunity to correct this type of mistake - a typographical error typically won't fit with any of the multiple choice answers and you'll have the chance to correct it (costing you only the correction time - and teaching you that precision is of some importance). The wrong multiple choice answers tend to fit deliberately with common conceptual errors. This actually illustrates a useful element of the SAT exam design.